The First Conman Literally Got Victims to Hand Him their Belongings
Conmen have probably been around since forever, and there is no way to tell who the first conman was. For all we know, he might have been a hominid ancestor from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, who got somebody to trade a juicy chunk of meat for a broken stone ax. However, we can pinpoint the origin of the term “conman”, which is short for “confidence man”. It can be traced back to William Thompson, a nineteenth-century New York City small-time criminal.
Thompson’s method was pretty straightforward: he simply talked strangers into handing him their money or goods. The first conman’s standard procedure was to dress up like a well-off high-class gentleman, approach a high-class mark, and strike up a conversation with him as if the two knew each other. We have all probably been in that kind of awkward situation when we run into people who know us, but for the life of us, we cannot remember where we know them from.